The United States is convinced that future wars will have a cyber component and founded USCybercom to confront the computerized aspects of its future conflicts..

Visiting London for the 2010 Cyber Warfare show, Daniel Kuehl--who worked on the design of air strikes in the first Gulf War--presented the problem of a computer center in a skyscraper.

“Let’s imagine that in that building there is a group of cybernetic systems, networks, routers, etc., which must be destroyed militarily,” Said Kuehl. “What would be the best way to do this? We could destroy it with a half a ton of explosives in an air attack. We could also use a cyber attack to eliminate systems, render them useless, and deny access to their legitimate users at crucial moments.”

Kuehl believes that there may come a day when the Pentagon’s computer experts have the same status as combat aircraft pilots in the field. These cybernetic weapons have the potential to be more efficient and effective, less harmful and lethal than kinetic weapons.

But as American warriors are improving, so are their potential enemies. In 2008, while the world was paying attention to the Olympic Games in Beijing, Georgia launched missiles against Russia, which responded with tanks and hackers. The mobilization of Moscow against South Ossetia included cyber attacks on Georgia’s communications and banking system.

Although Russia and China do not have a formal organization dedicated to cybernetic warfare in their military forces, they still have a growing capacity for computerized warfare, and USCybercom was established to respond to their capabilities in this area, and we are possibly seeing the first steps of a new cyber arms race.

“We have become dependent on our information networks to accomplish our missions; and while on the one hand these systems have greatly improved our capacity, they have also become an object of attack for our adversaries,” said Brigadier General Charles Shugg of the U.S. Air Force. “There is concern in both countries [China and Russia] that the United States is trying to achieve in cyberspace the same superiority that it is perceived to have in conventional and nuclear weapons and in space, and USCybercom will join in a single body the four existing cyber teams that currently exist in the U.S. armed forces.”